Full House

Tight and expensive market creates a generation of renters

What was once considered a short-term living arrangement will increasingly become a long-term necessity in the future as the impact of interest rate rises, petrol, high property prices and too many people chasing too few rental properties begins to bite around the country.

A survey by insurance company AAMI has revealed that more than 50 per cent of tenants in Australia believed they would never be able to afford their own home.

Newlyweds Paul and Amelia Antognelli cannot even contemplate buying their own home after experiencing the tight and expensive rental market first hand.

“Since I have been watching the rentals on the Internet like a hawk, I noticed a three bedroom townhouse in Illawong with an asking rent price of $400 that was advertised about 12 o’clock one weekday,” Mrs Antognelli said.

“I checked the Internet at about two-thirty the same day and found that the property’s rent had gone up to $440 per week in the space of two and a half hours!”

On average, weekly median rents in the shire have risen by $100 since last year, and in St George, up to $70 for a typical two-bedroom unit.

By comparison, the couple lived in Sutherland from February 2005 to December 2006, paying $250 per week to rent there.

Their new unit, also in Sutherland, is essentially the same thing but will now pay $330 per week.

Too add insult to injury, a recent report by property analyst BJS Shrapnel and the Real Estate Institute of NSW predicted that the city’s rents will rise by up to 50 per cent in the next four years.

James Holt of The Holt Property Group believes if rents reach their projected levels, “you might as well be paying off a mortgage.”